Do you hear the people sing.... the praises of a horrible movie

Over the holidays I went with my mother to see "Les Miserables".  Given the level of praise that the movie was receiving I figured I was going to come out of the movie with a new sense of the world.  I would maybe be so moved that I would become a priest and devote my life to God so that I too could change someone's life with the gift of a candlestick.  

Instead, it simply re-affirmed my belief that people are sheep.

Now before you just assume that, as a man, I am inclined to not like musicals and therefore cannot appreciate this gem of a movie you are simply wrong.  One of the things my mother and I would do together when I was a child is go see theater and I saw Les Miserables on stage when I was young and loved it.  I know all the words to every song.  I should be someone who is well-placed to appreciate the movie.

If it wasn't horrible.

First, the actors can't sing.  Hugh Jackman got eaten up and spit out by the part.   Amanda Seyfried as Cosette was awful.   Russell Crowe was passable, but hardly good.  Don't get me started on Sasha Baron Cohen.

But what about Anne Hathaway?  She was wonderful right?  Not so much.  Yes, the one shot of "dreamed a dream" was interesting, but it was not Oscar worthy and in my mind not even thought out properly.  The song is meant to be wistful and melancholy, but she played it as angry.  I even found it a little cliche.  I mean at one point she cried a single tear.  She should not be considered for an Oscar.  That song is the entirety of Fantine's role in Les Mis.  To give an Oscar for that would be worse than the Oscar to Dench (although I suppose the Queen never did both sell her teeth and whore herself out for cash)

So what about the acting?  See here is the thing.  Les Mis is not a well-written play.  It is the most cliched thing in existence.  Man (Jean Val Jean) steals loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving family.  He gets sent to jail for 19 years.  On serving his sentence he breaks his parole and is chased through the ages by an inspector.  He steals from a priest and is suddenly has a dramatic change of heart and finds god.  hijinks (and revolutions) ensue.  He never does anything wrong ever again - and is the paragon of virtue.  There is not a lot of nuance in playing Jean Val Jean.  You ask yourself what would Jesus do and then add the words "24601" . 

Now the story works in a musical because musical stories are largely unimportant.  Have you ever truly dissected the story of an opera?  It is like it is written by a 7 year-old.  Story is less important in a musical performed on stage because there is a sort of magic moment kind of thing that comes with a live actor performing in front of an audience where suspension of disbelief is much stronger.  

Movies do not have the same thing.  Let me illustrate with an example.  At some point the inspector realises that his pursuit of Jean Val Jean has been horrible and that Val Jean is a good man.  He then kills himself. 

(Aside: Remember I talked before about cliches and stupid story - this abrupt turn makes no sense.  The inspector has already moved heaven and earth to catch Val Jean and has been confronted time and time again by his virtue, but suddenly this time he just gives up and jumps of a bridge). 

In the play it is much more symbolic moment as there is a nice set piece where he "falls" and lights move all around him as he disappears off stage,  In the movie, he jumps like 1000 feet to his death into a gaping chasm and at the very end smashes his head on a rock retaining wall splattering like a watermelon.  In the play the scene "just" barely works as some sort of metaphor. In the movie the scene is so jaw-droppingly real that the realism snaps you up out of your seat and makes you realise how stupid the story is.

This is the problem with the entire movie.  Once you take the play away from the stage it ceases to work.  The ridiculousness of the script shines in the realism created.   Yet it continues to receive awards.

I must be missing something.

Or maybe something is missing in me. 

Maybe I am remembering something fondly from my childhood and have attached too much significance to it.  Maybe if I went and saw Les Mis for the first time on stage as an adult I would hate the stage production just as much.  Maybe this essay is a startling reminder that all of life is viewed through a vantage point that is continuously shifting each second as we grow, learn and experience while our perceptions of things is inherently rooted in the past and is a faulty gauge of empirical value.

Maybe.

Or maybe people are sheep